M&G Group

Overview

M&G Group, together with SAP partners ITvisors and Aiden, faced a challenge: a complex ERP landscape had to be migrated to SAP S/4HANA in just four months. Procrastination was not an option. RISE with SAP offered a solution.

M&G Group is the innovative market leader in Europe in the field of flue gas and ventilation systems. The company, originally from Groningen, has branches in the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Turkey, Belgium, France and the United Kingdom almost ninety years after it was founded. This international presence is partly the result of acquisitions, for example of the Turkish Ant Kalip in 2007 and the Italian Stabile in 2017.

According to Eric Pots, IT Application Manager at M&G Group, M&G Group's innovative strength enables it to offer solutions that are needed in the energy transition. These can be hybrid solutions that combine a central heating boiler with a heat pump. In addition, M&G Group is well positioned in the growth markets of ventilation systems and roof accessories. “The energy transition offers us great opportunities.”

Need for harmonisation

“There has been a need for further process harmonization within the M&G Group for some time,” continues Pots. The company will achieve this harmonization by integrating the current production in Groningen and Assen in a new factory in Assen as of 1 January 2023. A renewal of the ERP landscape is also part of the harmonisation. “Almost all branches used SAP ECC, but all with their own set-up and processes. As a result, they operated as individual companies.”

M&G Group quickly decided what the successor to SAP ECC should be. That became SAP S/4HANA Private Cloud Edition. Pots: “We have been working with SAP technology for twenty years, and that is where our knowledge and experience lie. SAP S/4HANA also offers broad functionality. The processes of M&G Group are demanding if you look, for example, at the planning, integration with production and the amount of data. SAP S/4HANA can handle that well.”

Time pressure

M&G Group and SAP partner ITvisors – who support M&G Group in its business transformation – were faced with a challenge. The move to SAP S/4HANA should not coincide with the transition to the new factory in Assen, and had to be completed before the start of the high season in July 2021. Once SAP S/4HANA was chosen in early 2021, M&G Group and ITvisors had only six months to complete the migration.

“That's why we went to SAP's private cloud, and not to a public cloud environment,” says Paul Theunissen, Managing Partner of ITvisors. “In the public cloud, we should have implemented SAP S/4HANA greenfield, which we could only have done country by country. With SAP S/4HANA Private Cloud Edition you can migrate an existing ERP environment, including the customization, in one go, and only then clean and optimize it.” Pots: “Turn first, then embellish.”

RISE with SAP

M&G Group also chose – as the first company in the Netherlands – to use the RISE with SAP introduced at the beginning of this year. This 'as-a-service' solution combines services and solutions from SAP. In this way, SAP, together with its partner ecosystem, ensures fast time-to-value and accelerates the digital transformation of companies.

"Rise with SAP is the total solution with which we purchase SAP services in the field of hosting and license in a future-proof manner from one party. This gives us a boost for now and supports us in realizing our plans for the future," says Rik Ellenbroek , Chief Financial Officer at the M&G Group.

“With RISE with SAP you pay a price per user, including the licenses and the hosting of the solution at SAP”, explains Theunissen. “The price you pay for the total solution is fairly competitive. You also get various tools for, for example, process optimization and a document server. Everything is delivered 'off the wall', can be scaled up and down flexibly and as a customer you only have one contact person. You can switch directly with SAP in terms of content.”

For the actual migration, the help of SAP partner Aiden was called in. Aiden has extensive experience with migrations to SAP S/4HANA, says Theunissen. Jan Paul Verstraate, Senior Account Executive at Aiden: “The specific methodology we use for migrations to SAP S/4HANA was also fairly easy to apply to RISE with SAP. It is precisely because of our approach that we were able to realize the migration within four months.”

Crucial alignment

“We started the migration at the beginning of March, and we went live at the beginning of July”, Verstraate concludes with satisfaction. “Good coordination between all parties is very important. From a technical point of view, the cloud tenant must be delivered at the right time and in the right way. Missing out on the specifications was therefore a no-go. The challenge lay in setting up the platform properly. Thanks to the smoothly running cooperation, we were able to carry out this jointly.”

According to Theunissen, that coordination was at least as important during the weekend of the go-live. “You then have to deal with many different parties. You have to know exactly who does what when. And what to do if something happens. There was not much stretch in the plan.”

There was also an important role for the project manager who was appointed from the business. Theunissen: “Its task was to ensure that resources were available from the business at all times to perform tests. That helps enormously. Then you have to start working with the findings immediately, and not let things take their course.”

Time for embellishment

According to Pots, M&G Group now has a stable foundation on which the company can continue to build, and on which the new factory can 'land'. "We can now start decorating and make optimal use of the power of SAP S/4HANA. We are doing this, among other things, by replacing customization with Fiori apps. For example, we are already there for the 'stream' order-to-cash started with. Further opportunities lie in optimizing processes and implementing SAP best practices as standard as possible. Only in the coming period will we really see the business value of SAP S/4HANA."

About Aiden

Client data

Year

2021
Client

M&G Group
Industry

Discrete manufacturing
Solution

RISE with SAP

SAP solutions used

The processes of M&G Group are demanding when you look at, for example, planning, integration with production and the amount of data. SAP S/4HANA can handle this well.

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M&G Group migrates to S/4HANA